Probably out of tune, although, who knows, you could be lucky. The taper of a conical flute is there to offset the fact that as we go up to the octave, we cover more of the embouchure, flattening the second octave. The taper is chosen to correct that for every note.
The whistle doesn’t have that issue, as the window mouth is fixed. I understand (but don’t know!) that the purpose of tapering in a whistle is tonal, rather than intonational, with perhaps some intent to reduce finger stretching from impossible to downright difficult. The tapering usually runs from one end to the other, whereas the flute is a subtle blend of cylinders and cones. If I’m right, it would be a remarkable coincidence if the whistle taper just happened to be the taper the flute would need.
But as I’ve indicated above, what I know about whistle acoustics could be written in foot-high letters across the thin end of a fipple. Perhaps one of our more fippulant contributors could tell us more. Indeed, if anyone happens to have a low D tapered tube whistle up their jumper and could estimate the inside diameters at top and bottom and the distance they are apart, it would be instructive to compare them with a typical flute bore.
Cylindrical whistle second octaves have a tendency to be flat as well.
Maybe slightly OT, but related question is there a source for equations to calculate tone hole size and placement on a conical bore - the equations, a spreadsheet, a program.
No. I have a version of the Excel spreadsheet calculator that I modified to do conical bores, but I was never able to get Dr Hoekje to verify that my modifications were correct (and I now believe they weren’t entirely) so I place no faith in it.
On a practical level, though, a straight conical bore essentially compresses everything proportionally, so it isn’t hard to get a first-order approximation for the conical bore.
Thanks, helpful and interesting. I continue to think that a possible
strategy for a silver conical flute is to make it in two pieces,
one a head joint, the other the body, the slide like a whistle
slide. POSSIBLY this might produce a good sounding tunable
flute while somewhat reducing expense. I do appreciate
that one would have to design the flute to play in tune,
not just draft a whistle to the purpose.
I wonder if that goes away in the tapered version. It would be good to do some RTTA of both.
Maybe slightly OT, but related question is there a source for equations to calculate tone hole size and placement on a conical bore - the equations, a spreadsheet, a program.
I’m working on that too, with Assoc Prof of Physics at NSW University, Joe Wolfe. I now have a basic working computer model of the flute (conical or cylindrical) on this computer, but it still needs more work to allow us to design flutes from scratch. I suspect even after we get the model tidied up, it will uncover further philosphical matters needing understanding before we can churn out successful flute designs.
It is all getting a bit exciting though. In a sudden burst we now have RTTA which enables us for the first time to really know what’s happening when we play. And we will soon have the ability to take big steps away from established tradition in the design of flutes. And we are developing the techniques for doing these flutes in metals as well as woods and polymers.
We don’t yet know if any of this will take us in new directions as Irish flute players - we may find that where we’ve been is as good as it’s likely to get. But even if we find that out, that’s valuable. We’ll know that we can just sit back and enjoy the music!
Sigh. There are still flute players out there who do not understand that their principal purpose for existance is to keep flute makers and repairers in a life of richness and splendour.
Looking at my current bank balance it becomes clear that there are a lot of such flute players out there.
In theory, no, although you’d be hard pressed to convince the owners of Powell gold flutes. Remembering that the flute is just the container for the active ingredient, air. Providing that container is rigid, non-porous and smooth, its job is done. So a brass conical flute should sound every bit as good as a silver one, or indeed a gold or platinum one. Lead will fail the rigid test, mercury is a bit runny, and uranium will make you glow in the dark, so I can’t say any metal is suitable. Aluminium might be, but it might need to be made a little thicker to prevent wall movement. Certainly if the cost of the metal becomes an issue, a nickel silver or brass one should work out fine. It could be silver plated like the Flute for India pictured earlier.
I would too, but unfortunately I’m aware of only three extent - two in private collections in the US and one in the Library of Congress in Washington.
I’m not aiming to make a close copy of the Clinton Flute for India. He appeared to base his on his own wooden 8-key flutes and it’s essentially an improved era flute like a Rudall. I’ll probably base mine on my Rudall 5088 model, which is a really nice flute from around 1845, about the time Rudalls quit improving their 8-keys and started getting seriously into multi-key flutes.
Having the same model available in metal, wood and polymer will enable me to compare them side-by-side to see what we have gained or lost.
Ack! I thought my inner Boehm flute player had died when I made the switch to the dark side, but I (or it) must protest! I don’t think it’s just players trying to justify a five-digit-priced flute who notice a difference between metals.
I do agree with the science that says the flute is just the vessel and not contributing to the sound like a violin’s top, but still, I did experience rather vivid differences between metals–gold, platinum, nickel silver (plated and not), and silver (even different alloys yielded different playing experiences). I think it’s pretty much impossible to do a true scientific comparison between flutes, where variables are limited to one.
However, among my comparisons were headjoints (with the same cut) in different metals/alloys by the same maker on the same flute body. Maybe it was material, maybe not, but differences were there–at least to me, the player. And I also experienced some commonalities between flutes of the same material by different makers.
I’m not convinced different metals would be obviously distinct in a blind listening test, but as a player, I had pretty strong preferences. Perhaps different metals influence response and feel more noticeably than tone. Although I should also say design and construction trumps material every time.
You actually experienced rather vivid differences between flutes that happened to be made of different metals, rather than experiencing differences betwen the metals themselves. And therein lies the problem. Until we can convince someone to make a few flutes in say copper and a few in gold, putting the same amount of exquisite care into both sets, and then carry out double blind tests on the flutes in front of an audience, we can’t prove it either way. Certainly the tests carried out so far indicate that the metals make no difference.
Even if we could prove it, of course, who wants to buy an exquisitely made flute in copper for $20,000?
Back to conical tubes and placing holes, would the book “Acoustical Aspects of Woodwind Instruments by Cornelis Johannes Nederveen” have any information, any opinions about this book?
And on to materials. It seems to me a very difficult question given that even making several ‘identical’ instruments out of the same material at the same time (well not quite the same time) results in instruments that are slightly different - tough the stories I have heard of usually involve wood as one of the materials. I believe that material does matter but design and execution are more important - and of course copper and silver or some other suitable metal are likely to be far more alike than plastic or wood or whatever.
Finally, at the risk of opening a can of worms, a double blind listening test may sound like a good idea but is not.
Without going into other problems let us assume that my latest paper tube flute does sound identical to my gold flute, but the player absolutely hates it and finds it very hard to play well - the gold flute is better for this player and is a better flute (if they can afford it). Of course the differences between silver and gold flutes of identical design is going to be subtle.
So check back in 5 years someone will be asking the same question and there will still not be a definitive answer at least not that everyone agrees on.
Oh I did read somewhere that at least some researchers of organ pipes have determined that the pipe material does make a difference.
Not to offend the artisan in anyone here, but experimentally, would a machine-made exact replica be the best route to go? Is this possible to such a high degree today? Maybe a good project for the UNSW robotics lab?
as far as i am aware, the research done has been on listening. it seems perplexing to me why no one would do interferograms? first of all, you would need to isolate several phenomena, not just material. i would like to see experiments done solely on the resonance of a flute, not connected to a player, and then compare them to experiments being played by flutes. i have a sneaking suspicion if you were to approach even the silver flute from a strictly acoustical, experimental aspect, that the resonance and harmonics are not lined up as well as they could be.
i am very excited, terry, that you are starting the road of trying to separate the player from the properties of the flute. it is about time! i have a lot of experimental ideas i want to do with flutes. i am going to start from scratch. i am starting with materials experiments. i have a bunch of interesting ideas for flutes (retuneable flutes that can be changed to play in new keys as a home key) and new ways to use wood. i dont know if any of it all is going to work out–it very well might not. regardless, it will be a lot of fun. i am starting my first experiments with wood later this week, and i am going to try and track down a lathe. i have sent you a p.m., terry.
if you listen to a violinist playing on a 3 million dollar violin, you can tell the quality of the violin, not by the sound it makes, but by listening to the way that the player uses it–you can tell that the violin listens to their every command. did the blind tests listen to that? did they ask the players how they liked each flute?
another problem with hearing tests and separate flutes is that flutes can play differently. two weeks ago i played 6 hand made silver flutes (all but one in the $10,000-$13,000 range; one was also a gold alloy). 5 of them were junk in my hands. it didnt matter that the flute was 13,000 dollars–in my hands, four of the flutes played worse than my several year old, never tuned-up, out of service $2,000 flute. i played 3 powels, a sankyo, an altus, and a brannen. all of them but the brannen were not worth a dime to me. the brannen, however, lit up in my hands. it was almost magical. it did anything i wanted, it was like a loose cannon. i could feel the whole flute buzzing in my hands. all the other flutes felt dead.
it was not that i just liked one flute better, the others sounded horrible when i played them, and the brannen i played sounded like a whole separate person playing the flute. it could be my playing style, the shape of my lips, the shape of my jaw, the cut of the embouchure, the resonant cavity of my mouth and throat; bottom line, the other flutes did not work in my hands.
no, it wouldnt be, in the strictest sense of the word. a machine made flute would be ready off the assembly line, no hands required. those flutes exist, and they are no good.
interestingly, however, you could make a flute almost entirely with machines, and still call it hand made. there is an art to using machines. at brannen flutes, for example, the flute is cast entirely by machines. the people just transfer between them. however, the magic is in the finishing and assembly. they are considered handmade, and the amount of work that goes into them is much far beyond just pouring silver into a mold.
i am friends with a concertina maker, who used to make every single part by hand, including the screws (female and male). now he buys screws and has a lot of expensive machines (they cost more than concertinas could ever turn a profit), and the quality and time to produce have gone up. again, they are considered hand made.
Pretty heavy going maths. And that’s the problem with flute calculations. It takes my pretty hot computer about 30 seconds to recalculate a flute. I wouldn’t want to do it by hand. I don’t know if everything you need is there, I suspect not as Joe et al spend a lot of their time on the acoustic impedance spectrometer determining the impedence presented by things like a 6mm diameter keyhole, 3mm deep, with a 12mm key raised 2mm above where the thickness of the key cup is 3mm. Arghhhh!
They even factor in “face impedance” - defined I’m sure as the level of difficulty encountered chatting up pretty fiddleplayers.
And on to materials. It seems to me a very difficult question given that even making several ‘identical’ instruments out of the same material at the same time (well not quite the same time) results in instruments that are slightly different - tough the stories I have heard of usually involve wood as one of the materials. I believe that material does matter but design and execution are more important - and of course copper and silver or some other suitable metal are likely to be far more alike than plastic or wood or whatever.
Yes indeed. That’s why I’d want to see a set of flutes in the two metals, not just one sample of each. And made serially, not in two sets. And have a second maker inspect them to eliminate any shortcomings.
Finally, at the risk of opening a can of worms, a double blind listening test may sound like a good idea but is not.
Without going into other problems let us assume that my latest paper tube flute > does > sound identical to my gold flute, but the player absolutely hates it and finds it very hard to play well - the gold flute is better for this player and is a better flute (if they can afford it). Of course the differences between silver and gold flutes of identical design or going to be subtle.
Agreed. In deed part of my requirement to have an audience is just so we have some witnesses, so it can’t be argued later that the tests were done in isolation. I do expect the player to be more sensitive than the listener, probably by a factor of about 10. And it’s the player we makers have to please, not the screaming fans.
So check back in 5 years someone will be asking the same question and there will still not be a definitive answer at least not that everyone agrees on.
That’s been John Coltman’s experience (the concrete flute man). Now in his nineties, he’s concluded he will never succeed in convincing people that material shouldn’t matter (within practical limits). When you look around at all the snake-oil products aimed at flute players, we have bigger hurdles to cross first.
Oh I did read somewhere that at least some researchers of organ pipes have determined that the pipe material does make a difference.
Haven’t heard, but it would make sense that organ pipes would be more sensitive to materials than a flute, so if anyone can detect the difference, they should be first.
I think it will be very interesting to see if my silver flute is significantly different in tone or power to the wooden equivalent. I’d expect it to be different (if we can’t tell between wood and silver, how could we ever tell between silver and gold?), but I don’t know how different. And which will be “better” (whatever that means!).
It’s certainly anticipated that once we have this sytem of flute modelling up, it will be applied also to the Boehm flute and should enable further improvements there.
another problem with hearing tests and separate flutes is that flutes can play differently. two weeks ago i played 6 hand made silver flutes (all but one in the $10,000-$13,000 range; one was also a gold alloy). 5 of them were junk in my hands. it didnt matter that the flute was 13,000 dollars–in my hands, four of the flutes played worse than my several year old, never tuned-up, out of service $2,000 flute. i played 3 powels, a sankyo, an altus, and a brannen. all of them but the brannen were not worth a dime to me. the brannen, however, lit up in my hands. it was almost magical. it did anything i wanted, it was like a loose cannon. i could feel the whole flute buzzing in my hands. all the other flutes felt dead.
it was not that i just liked one flute better, the others sounded horrible when i played them, and the brannen i played sounded like a whole separate person playing the flute. it could be my playing style, the shape of my lips, the shape of my jaw, the cut of the embouchure, the resonant cavity of my mouth and throat; bottom line, the other flutes did not work in my hands.
Yes, this is an everyday experience for the maker - some flutes just seem to work for some players, and others don’t. That’s why I make so many models. Indeed the GLP experience has been fascinating there. Reigning wisdom was that to play Irish music you needed a large-holed London-made flute. These broke down into two types - Pratten and Rudall. So, you can imagine my skepticism when first faced with Grey Larsen and his little-holed, small bored American-made flute. What rock has this guy been sleeping under? The GLP is now probably my best selling flute, and has made a generation of very frustrated flute players happy. They now have a flute that works for them, just like the Brannen worked for you. I wonder what else we take for granted?
I think there’s another piece of technology we are going to need before we can really get into analysing tone, like RTTA allows us to analyse tuning. If you play one note from your flute into an FFT (Fast Fourier Transform analyser) you will notice that the height ratios between the harmonics are constantly varying. Take a snapshot NOW and you see a very different picture to a snapshot taken NOW. And that’s with us just sitting in front of the FFT, like we used to sit in front of the tuner, pre RTTA. We now can see that we get different tuning results when we play, I’d be pretty confident we would get different tonal results too. So I can envisage a tone version of the RTTA, that will listen to us playing at reel speed, take down FFT data for every note, and spit out a series of FFTs integrated over the whole playing period - a real tonal signature. Then we should be able to play some Matt Malloy followed by some daiv and see what the differences are. And some Prattens, Rudalls, Boehms and GLP’s.
